Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

"Simply this, my own dear little child," answered Uncle John, and his voice took almost a solemn tone in its deep tenderness,--"when that time comes, as come it must, do not worry your husband with idle regrets for the past; remember that the husband is not the lover; remember that your sex love through your imagination, and look always for that clothing and refining of passion with sentiment, which, with us, belong only to the poetry and chivalry of youthful ardor. We may love you as well afterward,--nay, we may love you a great deal better,--but we cannot take the trouble of telling you so every day; we expect you to believe it once for all; and you,--you like to hear it over and over again, and, not hearing it, you begin to fancy it no longer true, and fall to trying experiments on your happiness. A fatal error this, Alice. There is nothing that men so often enjoy as the simply being let alone; but not one woman in a hundred can be made to believe in such a strange enjoyment. Then the wife becomes _exigeante_ and impatient, and the husband, after fruitless attempts to find out what he has done, never suspecting that the real trouble is what he has left undone, finds her unreasonable, and begins to harden himself to griefs which he classes, like Miss Edgeworth, under the head of 'Sorrows of my Lord Plumcake.'"

"Miserable fate of the nobler sex, Uncle,--disturbed, even in the sublime heights of philosophical self-possession, by the follies and unreasonablenesses of the weaker vessel! I suppose you allow men to live out their natures unrebuked, while women must live down theirs?"

"Not I, Alice,--but I am by nature a special pleader, and, just now, I am engaged on Herbert's side of the case. Fee me well, my darling, by a kiss or a merry look, and bring Herbert up to judgment, and I will tell him home truths too."

"Let me hear your argument for the other side, most subtile of reasoners, and I may, perhaps, be able to repeat them at second-hand, when occasion calls for them."

"Don't think of it, my dear! Second-hand arguments are like second-hand coffee,--the aroma and the strength have disappeared, never to be brought back again. But if the husband were really here, and the wife had paid well for properly-administered advice, I should say to him, 'Do not fancy that you have done everything for your wife when you have given her house, servants, and clothes; she really wants a little attention now and then. Try to turn your thoughts away from your more important affairs long enough to notice the pretty morning-wrapper or the well-fitting evening-dress which has cost her some thought for your sake; do not let a change in the furniture or a new ornament in the parlor go unnoticed till the bill comes in. And while, of course, you claim from her the most ready sympathy in all your interests and enthusiasms, give her, once in a great while, say every year or so, a little genuine interest in the housekeeping trials or dressmaker grievances that meet her at every turn.

"Moreover, I would recommend to you, should your wife happen to have some literary or artistic tastes, not to ignore them entirely because they do not pay so well as your counting-room accounts do, and are not so entertaining to you as billiards. I would even indulge her by sacrificing a whole evening to her, once in a while, even to the detriment of your own business or pleasure. Depend upon it, it will pay in the end."

"Now, Uncle, like Rosalind, you have simply misused your whole sex in your special pleadings, both for and against. If Herbert were here, I would appeal to him to know if the time can ever come when what I do can be uninteresting to him. But I know, for myself, that such a thing cannot be. You are not talking from your own experience, Uncle?" added she, suddenly looking up in his face.

"My dear Alice, were it possible, should it ever seem likely, that my experience might benefit you, how readily I would lay it open before you! But those who have lived their lives are like the prophets of old,--their words are believed only when they are fulfilled. The meaning of life is never understood till it is past. Like Moses on the rock, our faces are covered when the Lord passes by, and we see only his back. But look behind you, my darling!"

Alice turned suddenly and her face lighted up into the full beauty of happiness as she saw Herbert standing in the doorway.

"I hope you have room for me, Mr. Delano," said he, advancing, "for here I am, weather-bound, as well as Miss Alice and Kate. There is a drizzling rain falling out-of-doors, and your Kentucky roads are fast growing impassable for walkers."

Uncle John put into words the question that Alice's eyes had been asking so eagerly.

"Where did you stumble from, my dear fellow,--and at this time of night, too?"

"Why, I could not find any one at home on Fourth Street, so I took the last ferry-boat and came over, on a venture, to try the Kentucky hospitality, of which we New-Yorkers hear so much; and my stumbling walk through the mud made me so unpresentable, that I found the way round the house to Aunt Molly's premises, and left the tracks of my muddy boots all over her white kitchen, till she, in despair, provided me with a pair of your moccasins, and, shod in these shoes of silence, I came quietly in upon you. I do hope you are all glad to see me," he added, sitting down on the low seat that Alice had left, and looking up in her face as she stood by her uncle.

Alice shook her head with a pretty assumption of displeasure, as she said, "I told you I did not want to see you till to-morrow." But hardly half an hour had elapsed before she and Herbert had wandered off into the parlor, and Uncle John and I were left to watch them through the open door.

"If he were not so impulsive," said Uncle John, abruptly,--"if he were not so full of fancies! Kate, you are a wise and discreet little lady, and we understand each other. Did I say too much?"

Just then Alice looked back.

"Chloe is the one who sings madrigals to-night, Uncle; she is going to read Colin a lesson"; and, sitting down at the piano, she let her hands run over the keys and burst out joyously into that variation of Raleigh's pretty pastoral song,--

"Shepherd, what's Love? I prithee tell."
"It is a fountain and a well,
Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
And this is Love, as I've heard tell:
Repentance, repentance, repentance!"

TALK NUMBER THREE.

Five years have passed since Alice sat at Uncle John's feet and listened to his words that gave lessons of wisdom while they seemed only to amuse; and now she sits again on the low stool, looking up in his face, while I stand behind him and look down on her, marking the changes that those years have wrought. She has come back to us, our own Alice still,--but how different from the impetuous, impulsive girl who left us five years ago! Her face has lost its early freshness, though it seems to me lovelier than before, in its matured, womanly expression; but her eyes, which used to be lifted so eagerly, to glance so rapidly in their varying expression, are now hidden by their lashes even when she is talking earnestly; her lips have lost their mobility, and have even something stern in their fixedness; whilst her hair, brought down smoothly over her forehead and twisted firmly in the low knot behind, and her close-fitting widow's dress add to the sobriety and almost matronliness of her appearance.

For Alice is a widow now, and has come back to us in her bereavement. We have known but little of her real self for some years, so guarded have been her letters; and not until the whole terrible truth burst upon us, did we do more than suspect that her married life had not brought the happiness she anticipated. She is talking freely now she is at home again among her own people.

"I have sometimes thought, Uncle John, that all you said to me, the last night I spent here, had some meaning deeper than met the ear. Had you second sight? Did you foresee the future? Or was there that in the present which foreshadowed it to you?"

"I am no prophet, Alice. I spoke only from what I knew of life, and from my knowledge of your character and Herbert's. But I am yet to know how my words have been fulfilled."

"It makes no difference now," said she, slowly, and with a touching weariness. "And yet," she added, rousing herself, "it would make all the difference in the world to me, if I could see clearly where it was that I was to blame. Certainly I must have done wrong; such wretchedness could not have come otherwise."

Uncle John drew her hand within his, while he answered calmly,--"It is very probable you have done wrong, my darling; who of us are wise and prudent, loving and forbearing, as we should be?"

"You think so? How glad I am to hear you say so! Yes, I can see it now; I can see how I did that very thing against which you warned me. First came the time when Herbert forgot to admire everything which I did and said, and I--I tried little pouting ways, that I did not feel. Then they were so successful, that I carried them too far, and Herbert did not pet me out of them. Then I grew anxious and began to guess at that truth which was only too clear to me at last, that he did not love me as I loved him. Next,--oh, Uncle John, how much I was to blame!--I watched every word and look, gave meanings to things that had none, asked explanations where Herbert had none to give, and fairly put him under such restraint that he could neither look nor act himself. He fretted under it,--who would not?--and then began the thousand excuses for being away from home, business engagements, club-meetings, some country-customers of the firm, who must be taken to the theatre, and, at last, no excuse at all but want of time. I knew then that his love for me had never been more than a passing fancy, and, woman-like, I grew proud, shut my heart up from him, buried myself in my books. I never studied before as I did then, Uncle John, for I studied to get away from myself, and, looking back, I wonder even now at what I accomplished. Yes, you were right, books are fast friends,--and mine would have brought me their own exceeding great reward, had not my spirit been so bitter.

"It was then that mamma was so sick and I came home. Did you think me wonderfully calm, Kate? I think somebody said I showed astonishing self-control; but, in truth, I was frightened at myself,--I had no feeling about anything, Mamma's sickness seemed something entirely removed from me, something which concerned me not in the least. I was calm because I felt nothing. I wondered then and wonder now that you did not find me out, for I knew how unlike I was to my former self. Then mamma got well, and I was not glad; I went back to New York, and felt no sorrow at parting with you all.

"But when I got back, oh, Uncle John, I was too late!--too late to do right, even had I wished it! I don't know,--I made good resolutions on my way back: Heaven knows if I should have had strength to put them in practice. But it was all over; not only had I lost Herbert, but he had lost himself. The first time I saw him he was not himself,--I might as well say it,--he was drunk.

"There is no need of going through the rest, Uncle,--you will not ask it. I think I did everything I could;--I threw away my books; I devoted myself to making his home pleasant to him; never, no, never, in my girlish days, did I take half the pains to please him that I did now to win him from himself. I read to him, I sang to him, I filled the house with people that I knew were to his taste, I dressed for him, I let myself be admired by others that he might feel proud of me, might think me more worthy of admiration,--but all to no purpose. Sometimes I hoped, but more often I despaired; his fall seemed to me fearfully rapid, though now the three years seem to have been interminable. At last I had no hope but that of concealing the truth from you all. You thought me churlish, Kate, in my answer to your proposal to spend last winter with me? My darling, I dared not have you in my house. But it is over now. I knew how that last horrible attack would end when I sent for papa. He had gone through two before that, and the doctor told me the third would be fatal. Poor Herbert!--Uncle John, can I ever forgive myself?"

Alice looked up with dry and burning eyes into Uncle John's face, over which the tears were streaming.

"My child, it is right that you should blame yourself. What sorrow do we meet in life that we do not in part bring upon ourselves? Who is there of us who is not wise after time? which of us has not made some fatal mistake?"

I felt half indignant that Uncle John did not tell her how much more to blame, how weak, how reckless Herbert had been; but the calmer expression which came over Alice's countenance showed me that he was right, that he best knew her heart. She could not now be just to herself; she was happier in being unjust.

We were still and silent for a long time. The light wood-fire on the hearth crackled and burned to ashes, but it had done its office in tempering the chill of the autumn evening, and through the half-open door stole the 'sweet decaying smell' of the fallen leaves, while the hush of an Indian-summer night seemed to calm our very hearts with its stillness.

Uncle John spoke at last. His voice was very gentle and subdued as he said:

"I told you once, Alice, that my life should be opened to you, if ever its errors could be either warning or consolation to you. But who am I, to judge what beacon-lights we may hold out to each other? There is as much egotism, sometimes, in silence as in the free speech which asks for sympathy. Perhaps I have been too proud to lay open my follies before you and my little Kate."

Alice looked up, with a touch of her old eagerness, as Uncle John went on.

"It was long before you were born, my dear, that, for some college peccadilloes,--it is so long ago that I have almost forgotten now what they were,--I was suspended (rusticated we called it) for a term, and advised by the grave and dignified president to spend my time in repenting and in keeping up with my class. I had no mind to come home; I had no wish, by my presence, to keep the memory of my misdemeanors before my father's mind for six months; so I asked and gained leave to spend the summer in a little town in Western Massachusetts, where, as I said, I should have nothing to tempt me from my studies. I had heard from a classmate what famous shooting and fishing were to be found there, and I knew something of the beauty of Berkshire scenery; but I honorably intended to study well and faithfully, taking only the moderate amount of recreation necessary for my health.

"I went, and soon established myself in a quiet farm-house with my books, gun, and fishing-rod, and had passed there a whole month with an approving conscience and tolerable success both in studies and sport, when the farmer announced one morning, that, as he had one boarder, he might as well take another, and that a New York lady had been inquiring of his neighbor Johnson, when he was in the city last week, for some farm-house where they would be willing to take her cheap for the summer. She could have the best room, and he didn't suppose she'd be in anybody's way, so he had told Johnson that she might come, if she would put up with their country fare.

"She came the next week. She was a widow, some thirty years old, ten years older than I was. I did not think her pretty,--perhaps _piquante_, but that was all. In my first fastidiousness, I thought her hardly lady-like, and laughed at her evident attempts to attract my notice,--at her little vanities and affectations. But I do not know; we were always together; I saw no other woman but the farmer's wife. There were the mountain walks, the trees, the flowers, the moonlight; she talked so well upon them all! In short, you do not know, no young girl can know, the influence which a woman in middle life, if she has anything in her, has over a young man; and she,--she had shrewdness and a certain talent, and, I think now, knew what she was doing,--at any rate, I fell madly in love. I knew my father would never consent to my marrying then; I knew I was ruining my prospects by doing so; but that very knowledge only made me more eager to secure her.

"She was entirely independent of control, being left a widow with some little property, and threw no obstacles in my way. We were married there, in that little village, and for a few weeks I lived in a fool's paradise.

"I could not tell you--indeed, I would not tell you, if I could--how by degrees I found out what I had done,--that I had flung away my heart on a woman who married me simply to secure herself the position in society which her own imprudence had lost; how, when she found I had nothing to offer her but a home in my father's house, entirely dependent upon him, she accused me of having deceived her for the sake of her own miserable pittance; how she made herself the common talk of Newport by her dissipation, her extravagance, her affectations; how her love of excitement led her into such undisguised flirtations, under the name of friendships, with almost every man she met, that her imprudences, to call them by no harsher name, made my father insist, that, for my mother's sake, I should seek another home.

"I did so, but it was only to go through a repetition of similar scenes, of daring follies on her part, and reproaches on mine. At last, desperate, I induced my father to settle on her what would have been my share of his property on condition that she should return to New York,--while I, crushed down, mortified, and ashamed to look my friends in the face, and sick of the wrongs and follies of civilized life, grasped eagerly at an opportunity to join a fur-trading party, and buried myself alive in the wilds of the Northwest.

"I had no object in going there but to escape from my wife and from myself; but, once there, the charm of that free life took possession of me; adventure followed adventure; opportunities opened to me, and I grew to be an influential person, and made myself a home among the Indians. It is a wild life that the Indian traders live up in that far-away country, and many a reckless deed is done there which public opinion would frown upon here. I am afraid I was no better than my companions; I lived my life and drew from it whatever enjoyment it would bring; but, at least, I did not brutalize myself as some of them did; for that I may thank the refining influence of my early education. Meantime, I was almost lost to my family and, indeed, I hardly regretted it, for nothing would have brought me back while my wife lived, and, if I were not to be with my friends, why eat my heart out with longings for them? So, for nearly twenty years, I lived the life of adventure, danger, and privation, that draws its only charm from its independence.

"At last came a letter from your mother. It found its way to me from fort to fort, brought up part of the way with the letters to the troops stationed at our upper forts, then carried by the Indian runners to the trading-posts of the fur-companies till it reached me in the depths of the Rocky Mountains. My wife was dead,--she had died suddenly; my property, all that she had not squandered, (and it was so tied up by my father's forethought that she could only throw away a part of it,) was my own again; my sister longed to see me, and promised me a welcome to her house and heart. I grew restless from that moment, and, converting into money the not inconsiderable wealth with which I had surrounded myself in the shape of furs, horses, buffalo-robes, and so forth, I came down to the States again to begin life anew, a man of forty-five, my head whitened, and my features marked before their time from the life of exposure which I had led. Alice, I, too, was too late. I had dropped out of the tide of life and progress in my twenty years' seclusion, and, struggle as I might, I could not retrieve the time lost. The present age knew not of me,--I had lost my place in it; the thoughts, feelings, habits, of all around were strange to me; I had been pushed out of the line of march, and never could I fall into step again. In society, in business, in domestic life, it was all the same. Trial after trial taught me, at last, the truth; and when I had learned not only to believe it, but to accept it, I came home to my father's house, now mine, and made myself friends of my books,--those faithful ones who were as true to me as if I had never deserted them. They have brought me content, if not happiness; and you, Alice, you and Kate, you have filled fully an old man's heart."

Alice's tears were dropping fast on Uncle John's hand as she said,--

"I will be more to you henceforward than ever before. I have nothing else to live for now. Kate is the home child; but I--I will stay with you, and you shall teach me, too, to be contented,--to find my happiness, as you do, in making the happiness of all around."

Uncle John passed his other hand over her hair,--

"You shall stay with me for the present, my darling,--perhaps as long as I live. But life is not over for you, Alice. You have youth,--you have years in store. For you it is not _too late_."

AN EVENING MELODY.

Oh that yon pines which crown the steep
Their fires might ne'er surrender!
Oh that yon fervid knoll might keep,
While lasts the world, its splendor!

Pale poplars on the wind that lean,
And in the sunset shiver,
Oh that your golden stems might screen
For aye yon glassy river!

That yon white bird on homeward wing
Soft-sliding without motion,
And now in blue air vanishing
Like snow-flake lost in ocean,

Beyond our sight might never flee,
Yet onward still be flying;
And all the dying day might be
Immortal in its dying!

Pellucid thus in golden trance,
Thus mute in expectation,
What waits the Earth? Deliverance?
Ah, no! Transfiguration!

She dreams of that New Earth divine,
Conceived of seed immortal:
She sings, "Not mine the holier shrine,
But mine the cloudy portal!"

CHESUNCOOK

[Concluded.]

Early the next morning we started on our return up the Penobscot, my companion wishing to go about twenty-five miles above the Moosehead carry to a camp near the junction of the two forks, and look for moose there. Our host allowed us something for the quarter of the moose which we had brought, and which he was glad to get. Two explorers from Chamberlain Lake started at the same time that we did. Red flannel shirts should be worn in the woods, if only for the fine contrast which this color makes with the evergreens and the water. Thus I thought when I saw the forms of the explorers in their birch, poling up the rapids before us, far off against the forest. It is the surveyor's color also, most distinctly seen under all circumstances. We stopped to dine at Ragmuff, as before. My companion it was who wandered up the stream to look for moose this time, while Joe went to sleep on the bank, so that we felt sure of him; and I improved the opportunity to botanize and bathe. Soon after starting again, while Joe was gone back in the canoe for the frying-pan, which had been left, we picked a couple of quarts of tree-cranberries for a sauce.

I was surprised by Joe's asking me how far it was to the Moosehorn. He was pretty well acquainted with this stream, but he had noticed that I was curious about distances, and had several maps. He, and Indians generally, with whom I have talked, are not able to describe dimensions or distances in our measures with any accuracy. He could tell, perhaps, at what time we should arrive, but not how far it was. We saw a few wood-ducks, sheldrakes, and black ducks, but they were not so numerous there at that season as on our river at home. We scared the same family of wood-ducks before us, going and returning. We also heard the note of one fish-hawk, somewhat like that of a pigeon-woodpecker, and soon after saw him perched near the top of a dead white-pine against the island where we had first camped, while a company of peetweets were twittering and teetering about over the carcass of a moose on a low sandy spit just beneath. We drove the fish-hawk from perch to perch, each time eliciting a scream or whistle, for many miles before us. Our course being up-stream, we were obliged to work much harder than before, and had frequent use for a pole. Sometimes all three of us paddled together, standing up, small and heavily laden as the canoe was. About six miles from Moosehead, we began to see the mountains east of the north end of the lake, and at four o'clock we reached the carry.

The Indians were still encamped here. There were three, including the St. Francis Indian who had come in the steamer with us. One of the others was called Sabattis. Joe and the St. Francis Indian were plainly clear Indian, the other two apparently mixed Indian and white; but the difference was confined to their features and complexions, for all that I could see. We here cooked the tongue of the moose for supper,--having left the nose, which is esteemed the choicest part, at Chesuncook, boiling, it being a good deal of trouble to prepare it. We also stewed our tree-cranberries, (_Viburnum opulus_,) sweetening them with sugar. The lumberers sometimes cook them with molasses. They were used in Arnold's expedition. This sauce was very grateful to us who had been confined to hard bread, pork, and moose-meat, and, notwithstanding their seeds, we all three pronounced them equal to the common cranberry; but perhaps some allowance is to be made for our forest appetites. It would be worth the while to cultivate them, both for beauty and for food. I afterward saw them in a garden in Bangor. Joe said that they were called _ebeemenar_.

While we were getting supper, Joe commenced curing the moose-hide, on which I had sat a good part of the voyage, he having already cut most of the hair off with his knife at the Caucomgomoc. He set up two stout forked poles on the bank, seven or eight feet high, and as much asunder east and west, and having cut slits eight or ten inches long, and the same distance apart, close to the edge, on the sides of the hide, he threaded poles through them, and then, placing one of the poles on the forked stakes, tied the other down tightly at the bottom. The two ends also were tied with cedar bark, their usual string, to the upright poles, through small holes at short intervals. The hide, thus stretched, and slanted a little to the north, to expose its flesh side to the sun, measured, in the extreme, eight feet long by six high. Where any flesh still adhered, Joe boldly scored it with his knife to lay it open to the sun. It now appeared somewhat spotted and injured by the duck shot. You may see the old frames on which hides have been stretched at many camping-places in these woods.

For some reason or other, the going to the forks of the Penobscot was given up, and we decided to stop here, my companion intending to hunt down the stream at night. The Indians invited us to lodge with them, but my companion inclined to go to the log-camp on the carry. This camp was close and dirty, and had an ill smell, and I preferred to accept the Indians' offer, if we did not make a camp for ourselves; for, though they were dirty, too, they were more in the open air, and were much more agreeable, and even refined company, than the lumberers. The most interesting question entertained at the lumberers' camp was, which man could "handle" any other on the carry; and, for the most part, they possessed no qualities which you could not lay hands on. So we went to the Indians' camp or wigwam.

It was rather windy, and therefore Joe concluded to hunt after midnight, if the wind went down, which the other Indians thought it would not do, because it was from the south. The two mixed bloods, however, went off up the river for moose at dark, before we arrived at their camp. This Indian camp was a slight, patched-up affair, which had stood there several weeks, built shed-fashion, open to the fire on the west. If the wind changed, they could turn it round. It was formed by two forked stakes and a cross-bar, with rafters slanted from this to the ground. The covering was partly an old sail, partly birch-bark, quite imperfect, but securely tied on, and coming down to the ground on the sides. A large log was rolled up at the back side for a headboard, and two or three moose-hides were spread on the ground with the hair up. Various articles of their wardrobe were tucked around the sides and corners, or under the roof. They were smoking moose-meat on just such a crate as is represented by With in De Bry's "Collectio Peregrinationum," published in 1588, and which the natives of Brazil called _boucan_, (whence buccaneer,) on which were frequently shown pieces of human flesh drying along with the rest. It was erected in front of the camp over the usual large fire, in the form of an oblong square. Two stout forked stakes, four or five feet apart and five feet high, were driven into the ground at each end, and then two poles ten feet long were stretched across over the fire, and smaller ones laid transversely on these a foot apart. On the last hung large, thin slices of moose-meat smoking and drying, a space being left open over the centre of the fire. There was the whole heart, black as a thirty-two pound ball, hanging at one corner. They said, that it took three or four days to cure this meat, and it would keep a year or more. Refuse pieces lay about on the ground in different stages of decay, and some pieces also in the fire, half buried and sizzling in the ashes, as black and dirty as an old shoe. These last I at first thought were thrown away, but afterwards found that they were being cooked. Also a tremendous rib-piece was roasting before the fire, being impaled on an upright stake forced in and out between the ribs. There was a moose-hide stretched and curing on poles like ours, and quite a pile of cured skins close by. They had killed twenty-two moose within two months, but, as they could use but very little of the meat, they left the carcasses on the ground. Altogether it was about as savage a sight as was ever witnessed, and I was carried back at once three hundred years. There were many torches of birch-bark, shaped like straight tin horns, lying ready for use on a stump outside.

For fear of dirt, we spread our blankets over their hides, so as not to touch them anywhere. The St. Francis Indian and Joe alone were there at first, and we lay on our backs talking with them till midnight. They were very sociable, and, when they did not talk with us, kept up a steady chatting in their own language. We heard a small bird just after dark, which, Joe said, sang at a certain hour in the night,--at ten o'clock, he believed. We also heard the hylodes and tree-toads, and the lumberers singing in their camp a quarter of a mile off. I told them that I had seen pictured in old books pieces of human flesh drying on these crates; whereupon they repeated some tradition about the Mohawks eating human flesh, what parts they preferred, etc., and also of a battle with the Mohawks near Moosehead, in which many of the latter were killed; but I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way. At first I was nearly roasted out, for I lay against one side of the camp, and felt the heat reflected not only from the birch-bark above, but from the side; and again I remembered the sufferings of the Jesuit missionaries, and what extremes of heat and cold the Indians were said to endure. I struggled long between my desire to remain and talk with them, and my impulse to rush out and stretch myself on the cool grass; and when I was about to take the last step, Joe, hearing my murmurs, or else being uncomfortable himself, got up and partially dispersed the fire. I suppose that that is Indian manners,--to defend yourself.

While lying there listening to the Indians, I amused myself with trying to guess at their subject by their gestures, or some proper name introduced. There can be no more startling evidence of their being a distinct and comparatively aboriginal race, than to hear this unaltered Indian language, which the white man cannot speak nor understand. We may suspect change and deterioration in almost every other particular, but the language which is so wholly unintelligible to us. It took me by surprise, though I had found so many arrow-heads, and convinced me that the Indian was not the invention of historians and poets. It was a purely wild and primitive American sound, as much as the barking of a _chickaree_, and I could not understand a syllable of it; but Paugus, had he been there, would have understood it. These Abenakis gossiped, laughed, and jested, in the language in which Eliot's Indian Bible is written, the language which has been spoken in New England who shall say how long? These were the sounds that issued from the wigwams of this country before Columbus was born; they have not yet died away; and, with remarkably few exceptions, the language of their forefathers is still copious enough for them. I felt that I stood, or rather lay, as near to the primitive man of America, that night, as any of its discoverers ever did.

In the midst of their conversation, Joe suddenly appealed to me to know how long Moosehead Lake was.

Meanwhile, as we lay there, Joe was making and trying his horn, to be ready for hunting after midnight. The St. Francis Indian also amused himself with sounding it, or rather calling through it; for the sound is made with the voice, and not by blowing through the horn. The latter appeared to be a speculator in moose-hides. He bought my companion's for two dollars and a quarter, green. Joe said that it was worth two and a half at Oldtown. Its chief use is for moccasins. One or two of these Indians wore them. I was told, that, by a recent law of Maine, foreigners are not allowed to kill moose there at any season; white Americans can kill them only at a particular season, but the Indians of Maine at all seasons. The St. Francis Indian accordingly asked my companion for a _wighiggin_, or bill, to show, since he was a foreigner. He lived near Sorel. I found that he could write his name very well, _Tahmunt Swasen_. One Ellis, an old white man of Guilford, a town through which we passed, not far from the south end of Moosehead, was the most celebrated moose-hunter of those parts. Indians and whites spoke with equal respect of him. Tahmunt said, that there were more moose here than in the Adirondack country in New York, where he had hunted; that three years before there were a great many about, and there were a great many now in the woods, but they did not come out to the water. It was of no use to hunt them at midnight,--they would not come out then. I asked Sabattis, after he came home, if the moose never attacked him. He answered, that you must not fire many times so as to mad him. "I fire once and hit him in the right place, and in the morning I find him. He won't go far. But if you keep firing, you mad him. I fired once five bullets, every one through the heart, and he did not mind 'em at all; it only made him more mad." I asked him if they did not hunt them with dogs. He said, that they did so in winter, but never in the summer, for then it was of no use; they would run right off straight and swiftly a hundred miles.

Another Indian said, that the moose, once scared, would run all day. A dog will hang to their lips, and be carried along till he is swung against a tree and drops off. They cannot run on a "glaze," though they can run in snow four feet deep; but the caribou can run on ice. They commonly find two or three moose together. They cover themselves with water, all but their noses, to escape flies. He had the horns of what he called "the black moose that goes in low lands." These spread three or four feet. The "red moose" was another kind, "running on mountains," and had horns which spread six feet. Such were his distinctions. Both can move their horns. The broad flat blades are covered with hair, and are so soft, when the animal is alive, that you can run a knife through them. They regard it as a good or bad sign, if the horns turn this way or that. His caribou horns had been gnawed by mice in his wigwam, but he thought that the horns neither of the moose nor of the caribou were ever gnawed while the creature was alive, as some have asserted. An Indian, whom I met after this at Oldtown, who had carried about a bear and other animals of Maine to exhibit, told me that thirty years ago there were not so many moose in Maine as now; also, that the moose were very easily tamed, and would come back when once fed, and so would deer, but not caribou. The Indians of this neighborhood are about as familiar with the moose as we are with the ox, having associated with them for so many generations. Father Rasles, in his Dictionary of the Abenaki Language, gives not only a word for the male moose, (_aianbé_) and another for the female, (_hèrar_,) but for the bone which is in the middle of the heart of the moose (!), and for his left hind-leg.

There were none of the small deer up there; they are more common about the settlements. One ran into the city of Bangor two years before, and jumped through a window of costly plate glass, and then into a mirror, where it thought it recognized one of its kind, and out again, and so on, leaping over the heads of the crowd, until it was captured. This the inhabitants speak of as the deer that went a-shopping. The last-mentioned Indian spoke of the _lunxus_ or Indian devil, (which I take to be the cougar, and not the _Gulo luscus_,) as the only animal in Maine which man need fear; it would follow a man, and did not mind a fire. He also said, that beavers were getting to be pretty numerous again, where we went, but their skins brought so little now that it was not profitable to hunt them.

I had put the ears of our moose, which were ten inches long, to dry along with the moose-meat over the fire, wishing to preserve them; but Sabattis told me that I must skin and cure them, else the hair would all come off. He observed, that they made tobacco-pouches of the skins of their ears, putting the two together inside to inside. I asked him how he got fire; and he produced a little cylindrical box of friction-matches. He also had flints and steel, and some punk, which was not dry; I think it was from the yellow birch. "But suppose you upset, and all these and your powder get wet." "Then," said he, "we wait till we get to where there is some fire." I produced from my pocket a little vial, containing matches, stoppled water-tight, and told him, that, though we were upset, we should still have some dry matches; at which he stared without saying a word.

We lay awake thus a long while talking, and they gave us the meaning of many Indian names of lakes and streams in the vicinity,--especially Tahmunt. I asked the Indian name of Moosehead Lake. Joe answered, _Sebamook_; Tahmunt pronounced it _Sebemook_. When I asked what it meant, they answered, Moosehead Lake. At length, getting my meaning, they alternately repeated the word over to themselves, as a philologist might,--_Sebamook_,--_Sebamook_,--now and then comparing notes in Indian; for there was a slight difference in their dialects; and finally Tahmunt said, "Ugh! I know,"--and he rose up partly on the moose-hide,--"like as here is a place, and there is a place," pointing to different parts of the hide, "and you take water from there and fill this, and it stays here; that is _Sebamook_." I understood him to mean that it was a reservoir of water which did not run away, the river coming in on one side and passing out again near the same place, leaving a permanent bay. Another Indian said, that it meant Large-Bay Lake, and that _Sebago_ and _Sebec_, the names of other lakes, were kindred words, meaning large open water. Joe said that _Seboois_ meant Little River. I observed their inability, often described, to convey an abstract idea. Having got the idea, though indistinctly, they groped about in vain for words with which to express it. Tahmunt thought that the whites called it Moosehead Lake, because Mount Kineo, which commands it, is shaped like a moose's head, and that Moose River was so called "because the mountain points right across the lake to its mouth." John Josselyn, writing about 1673, says, "Twelve miles from Casco Bay, and passable for men and horses, is a lake, called by the Indians Sebug. On the brink thereof, at one end, is the famous rock, shaped like a moose deer or helk, diaphanous, and called the Moose Rock." He appears to have confounded Sebamook with Sebago, which is nearer, but has no "diaphanous" rock on its shore.

I give more of their definitions, for what they are worth,--partly _because_ they differ sometimes from the commonly received ones. They never analyzed these words before. After long deliberation and repeating of the word, for it gave much trouble, Tahmunt said that _Chesuncook_ meant a place where many streams emptied in (?), and he enumerated them,--Penobscot, Umbazookskus, Cusabesex, Red Brook, etc.--"_Caucomgomoc_,--what does that mean?" "What are those large white birds?" he asked. "Gulls," said I. "Ugh! Gull Lake."--_Pammadumcook_, Joe thought, meant the Lake with Gravelly Bottom or Bed.--_Kenduskeag_, Tahmunt concluded at last, after asking if birches went up it, for he said that he was not much acquainted with it, meant something like this: "You go up Penobscot till you come to _Kenduskeag_, and you go by, you don't turn up there. That is _Kenduskeag_." (?) Another Indian, however, who knew the river better, told us afterward that it meant Little Eel River.--_Mattawamkeag_ was a place where two rivers meet. (?)--_Penobscot_ was Rocky River. One writer says, that this was "originally the name of only a section of the main channel, from the head of the tide-water to a short distance above Oldtown."

A very intelligent Indian, whom we afterward met, son-in-law of Neptune, gave us also these other definitions:--_Umbazookskus_, Meadow Stream; _Millinoket_, Place of Islands; _Aboljacarmegus_, Smooth-Ledge Falls (and Dead-Water); _Aboljacarmeguscook_, the stream emptying in; (the last was the word he gave when I asked about _Aboljacknagesic_, which he did not recognize;) _Mattahumkeag_, Sand-Creek Pond; _Piscataquis_, Branch of a River.

I asked our hosts what _Musketaquid_, the Indian name of Concord, Mass., meant; but they changed it to _Musketicook_, and repeated that, and Tahmunt said that it meant Dead Stream, which is probably true. _Cook_ appears to mean stream, and perhaps _quid_ signifies the place or ground. When I asked the meaning of the names of two of our hills, they answered that they were another language. As Tahmunt said that he traded at Quebec, my companion inquired the meaning of the word _Quebec_, about which there has been so much question. He did not know, but began to conjecture. He asked what those great ships were called that carried soldiers. "Men-of-war," we answered. "Well," he said, "when the English ships came up the river, they could not go any further, it was so narrow there; they must go back,--go-back,--that's Que-bec." I mention this to show the value of his authority in the other cases.

Late at night the other two Indians came home from moose-hunting, not having been successful, aroused the fire again, lighted their pipes, smoked awhile, took something strong to drink, and ate some moose-meat, and, finding what room they could, lay down on the moose-hides; and thus we passed the night, two white men and four Indians, side by side.

When I awoke in the morning the weather was drizzling. One of the Indians was lying outside, rolled in his blanket, on the opposite side of the fire, for want of room. Joe had neglected to awake my companion, and he had done no hunting that night. Tahmunt was making a cross-bar for his canoe with a singularly shaped knife, such as I have since seen other Indians using. The blade was thin, about three quarters of an inch wide, and eight or nine inches long, but curved out of its plane into a hook, which he said made it more convenient to shave with. As the Indians very far north and northwest use the same kind of knife, I suspect that it was made according to an aboriginal pattern, though some white artisans may use a similar one. The Indians baked a loaf of flour bread in a spider on its edge before the fire for their breakfast; and while my companion was making tea, I caught a dozen sizable fishes in the Penobscot, two kinds of sucker and one trout. After we had breakfasted by ourselves, one of our bedfellows, who had also breakfasted, came along, and, being invited, took a cup of tea, and finally, taking up the common platter, licked it clean. But he was nothing to a white fellow, a lumberer, who was continually stuffing himself with the Indians' moose-meat, and was the butt of his companions accordingly. He seems to have thought that it was a feast "to eat all." It is commonly said that the white man finally surpasses the Indian on his own ground, and it was proved true in this case. I cannot swear to his employment during the hours of darkness, but I saw him at it again as soon as it was light, though he came a quarter of a mile to his work.

The rain prevented our continuing any longer in the woods; so giving some of our provisions and utensils to the Indians, we took leave of them. This being the steamer's day, I set out for the lake at once. At the carry-man's camp I saw many little birds, brownish and yellowish, with some white tail-feathers, hopping on the wood-pile, in company with the slate-colored snow-bird, (_Fringilla hiemalis_,) but more familiar than they. The lumberers said that they came round their camps, and they gave them a vulgar name. Their simple and lively note, which was heard in all the woods, was very familiar to me, though I had never before chanced to see the bird while uttering it, and it interested me not a little, because I had had many a vain chase in a spring-morning in the direction of that sound, in order to identify the bird. On the 28th of the next month, (October,) I saw in my yard, in a drizzling day, many of the same kind of birds flitting about amid the weeds, and uttering a faint _chip_ merely. There was one full-plumaged Yellow-crowned Warbler (_Sylvia coronata_) among them, and I saw that the others were the young birds of that season. They had followed me from Moosehead and the North. I have since frequently seen the full-plumaged ones while uttering that note in the spring.

I walked over the carry alone and waited at the head of the lake. An eagle, or some other large bird, flew screaming away from its perch by the shore at my approach. For an hour after I reached the shore there was not a human being to be seen, and I had all that wide prospect to myself. I thought that I heard the sound of the steamer before she came in sight on the open lake. I noticed at the landing, when the steamer came in, one of our bedfellows, who had been a-moose-hunting the night before, now very sprucely dressed in a clean white shirt and fine black pants, a true Indian dandy, who had evidently come over the carry to show himself to any arrivers on the north shore of Moosehead Lake, just as New York dandies take a turn up Broadway and stand on the steps of a hotel.

Midway the lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men, with their _bateau_, who had been exploring for six weeks as far as the Canada line, and had let their beards grow. They had the skin of a beaver, which they had recently caught, stretched on an oval hoop, though the fur was not good at that season. I talked with one of them, telling him that I had come all this distance partly to see where the white-pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built, grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look for it. With a smile, he answered, that he could hardly tell me. However, he said that he had found enough to employ two teams the next winter in a place where there was thought to be none left. What was considered a "tip-top" tree now was not looked at twenty years ago, when he first went into the business; but they succeeded very well now with what was considered quite inferior timber then. The explorer used to cut into a tree higher and higher up, to see if it was false-hearted, and if there was a rotten heart as big as his arm, he let it alone; but now they cut such a tree, and sawed it all around the rot, and it made the very best of boards, for in such a case they were never shaky.